


power

by franziska_von_karma_enthusiast



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Everyone joins the future foundation au but thats not really relevant, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Intrusive Thoughts, Jealousy, Medical Malpractice, Medical Procedures, Mental Illness, Mentions of Murder, One-Sided Relationship, Post-Canon, Self-Hatred, Tsumiki-centric, Unhealthy Relationships, Violent Thoughts, komahina isnt super explicit but its Present, which is the junko/tsumiki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-05 16:44:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franziska_von_karma_enthusiast/pseuds/franziska_von_karma_enthusiast
Summary: disgusting [dis-guhs-ting], adj: causing disgust; offensive to the physical, moral, or aesthetic taste; sickening, repulsive, vile, repugnant, loathsome, distasteful, horrid, nauseating.





	power

**Author's Note:**

> YOU MAY NOTICE THIS WAS POSTED IN PART YESTERDAY BUT,, I DIDN'T NOTICE,, I deleted the accidentally posted one hhh this one has like 2000 more words
> 
> I had this written in part a while ago when I was having lots of thoughts about Tsumiki, who I love dearly, but I only just got round to pounding it out.
> 
> Uhhh full context I was really hyped about an AU where all of the remnants join the future foundation when I brainstormed this a few months ago and that's the setting basically. I also doodled what I pictured The Gang to look like in that setting but the only relevant change here is that Tsumiki wears a lot of plasters. Just so no one gets confused,,

_"I mean, you have medical experience, right?"_

 

...is the question that led her to this situation, bright lights focused only on the already pale skin in the middle of the room, leaving the corners dark with plenty of space for her demons. She freezes for a moment, gazing at the silent body in a sedated coma that laid bare beneath her thumb. The boy that asked her the question was long since absent now, his place temporarily taken by the unfeeling mass they all knew and feared, barely paying attention to her distracted state as he dutifully performs the job his skills were uploaded for in the first place. Watching him act confidently on the stump of a right arm, all his attention focused on that spot, just walls her off further from the scene. She is tormented by her own ability.

_Anything._

Right now, she could do absolutely  _anything_ she wanted to the unwilling participant of this particular edition of her hourly daymares that slept helpfully at her heel. It baffles her as much as it intoxicates her. She could completely destroy the lovestruck efforts of the one carefully binding every broken vessel to the prosthetic he had spent so long perfecting, but instead, she drains the pooled blood to clear his vision.

A hazy, drunken fever fuelled by gasps of choked air and helpless gargles as viscous blood dripped through her fingers overcomes her. It isn't easy to forget how it feels to end a life. Every time that an out of tune guitar chord echoes through the restaurant, accompanied by the coarse complaints of a vitriolic bully, is a fleeting reminder of the monster she is.

A reminder of how easy it would be to pick up that mask again. To let Her into her heart with pride and wear her lusts on her sleeve like she sometimes wishes she could. It's disgusting. Disgusting.  _Disgusting._ Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.

The sickness scrapes at her throat with the bile-painted fingernails of the rotting limb cast aside in favour of some broken boy Hinata thinks he can fix. As if he wasn't on anything above her level.

It confuses her, how everyone seemed to so readily accept the idea of casting Her aside.

 

* * *

 

 

They leave the room without speaking a word, Hinata's mind evidently fractured along a million different pathways and struggling to piece itself back together under the weight of Kamukura's presence. She is much too meek to use her words and shatter it further. She catches her ugly form in the glass separating the two medics and their sole patient. It's distorted enough that she can visualise how a stranger may see her, arms dotted with crude, children's bandaids as if they were a fashion statement. to the others, she supposes a more apt explanation would be her clumsiness.

But when she looks upon herself like this, even for a moment, she sees what she tries to hide beneath, constellations of scars marring her skin, covered up as if, maybe, if she was to wait long enough, she would take them off someday just to find them all gone. She dreams about it, sometimes, just waking up one day and being whole. But then she wakes up for real, and learns anew every time that a scar is a scar. Storied tattoos of people exerting their power over her pathetically weak body, too slight and too fearful to resist at any display of strength.

When Koizumi asks about a new one, it is infinitely easier to pretend she fell and grazed herself than to confess to another living soul that she sometimes lets herself think she can get better, that she can block the flow of her poison. She was so childish, to ever think that she could simply kiss all her ouchies goodbye some day.

Sometimes she wishes that the death she once felt truly was the last time she felt anything.

It made her ill, knowing that she has what she had always wanted. Her life lay in her own hands, within her control, and not that of sneering demands made by people who never cared about her. She could live free of that at last.

But it made her ill, knowing that she had to manage herself, now, that she needed to know what she wanted rather than rely on plump red lips brushing her ear as she is told it. The rising bile just got more and more bitter the more she craves the cold touch of the hand that died its final death just now, when Hinata threw it down the hospital's trash chute with no more emotion than a distasteful sneer. She wanted those fingers to wrap around her wrist and guide every incision she made into the future.

But here she is, and here She isn't. In control.

 

* * *

 

 

It has been some months since the operation.

 

He seems happier now, happier than she's ever seen him. His smiles are more content than polite, his calm demeanour more genuine than a carefully upheld mask of stability. He didn't seem this stable back then, as he lay down his arm with eyes reflecting his mind's spiral. He screamed in agony under her watchful eye as the hacksaw tore through ripe flesh. Her hands moved with purpose as she watched tendons snap and skeletal muscle move aside to the metal teeth that slowly but surely bore through bone. He told her he didn't need an anaesthetic, and to be fair, she wouldn't have given him any regardless. Giving him the mercy of escaping the pain - the  _despair-_ he's asked her for would make Her so, so  _so_ disappointed that she would never be able to run her hands through strawberry pink curls matted with what was once red but now a deep brown and grasp Her now cold manicured hands without feeling shame. She remembers when the last stubborn bit of skin gave up its resistance and she just watched as a seemingly endless flow of blood poured from him, wondering how long she could let him bleed before closing the wound with a hand she would much rather keep to herself became necessary.

The mechanical replacement that clung where She once existed taunted her. Seeing it wrapped around the warm hands of another made her head spin with envy, despite it being a cold imitation of something now much more lifeless. Her horridness knows no bounds. She has no power over the man in front of her - not anymore. There's no derisive jeer she could spit at him to force him into the whirlwind of spiralling madness both had dwelled in for far too long. All it would do, she knows, is let him see her for the monster she was, the cracks that all the kindness in the world couldn't fill.

The only crutch she can stand on is the scalpel lying not too far from her now, sleeping within a locked drawer only she and the rest of the medical staff have access to.

 _"What a pig,"_ a distant voice echoes, a scathing tone that quickly devolved into unintelligible terrified gargles, begs for mercy that would ever go unheard, blood pouring down her neck and painting the stage along with her pale hands. The tape she held against the wound did little to quell the lingering sensation of what was once a life fading into nought, the comforting phantom warmth of slim digits threaded with her own, guiding her every move. Sometimes she wants to walk over to the blonde and do it all again, letting her know that pigs are the ones that get slaughtered, not the butcher.

Komaeda doesn't seem to notice her wandering mind, his own dulled by the distracting sensation of normalcy that came with being able to casually chatter about his day. His eyes soften somewhat whenever Hinata's name comes up in his recount, along with a fond twitch of robotic fingers.

 She hates it. She doesn't want to, and completely resents her own distaste, but the mere mention of his name makes some sorrowful force in her soul throw itself against her ribs. Never in her life had she felt closer to Her than within the simulation, every lovingly crafted pixel of the world was poisoned with Her being and she could feel it flowing into her like the comforting blanket of familiarity it was. A chorus of hissed out breaths was accompanied by a base rhythm of fingers clawing at her in desperation atop the stage, conducted by the well-maintained hands she just wants to hold. She could almost feel soft curls brushing against her while a made-up face draws close and readily murmurs the praise she's always craved. And it was him that stole Her away for good; it was him that took her one, singular kindred spirit and glued together his broken parts with opens arms and promises of happiness. The lilt of affection in Komaeda's tone resurfaces and it strikes her so hard she could retch.

 _But_ , whatever demon lay deep within her core delights,there was only so much Hinata could do and while she his mind was being mended, his body was under her jurisdiction. No matter how Hinata picks up the pieces of Komaeda's glass house, she knows that she will always have a hammer ready to chip away at the pillars until the whole structure crumbles once more. His poor health will always be in her capable hands, and the taste of his dependence is  _so_ addictive.

Despite how nauseous the thought makes her, there's an undeniable thrill as she prepares Komaeda's dosage. It would be easy - all too easy - to mix the medication with a little something else. As he babbles about a budding friendship with hope bright in his eyes, she considers the use of a sedative, the type that could immobilise a horse and keep it fully conscious. A poor choice of drug to banish suffering, but a fantastic one at removing the ability to do anything about it. And nothing is stopping her from doing it, too. She can whip it up in no time. She is aware of a few different configurations that do the job, the necessary puzzle pieces readily available in any hospital worth its weight. The raucous laughter of shadowed figures having their way with her paralysed husk made sure of that. And it would be so very,  _very_ easy for her to do it, too.

She would pretend that nothing had changed, that this routine check-up was as routine as ever, until he lay pliant on the hospital bed, ready to bend to her will. She would look at his newer arm, glaring at her as the light bounces from it, and mourn the bloodied (albeit carefully maintained) palm she had always wanted to press to her cheek. The first thing she would do, she thinks, is throw the thing where none would see it again, smash Hinata's efforts into shards of iron as the imitated nerve impulses shot up Komaeda's spine. Only when the stump is left would she slow her destructive efforts, severing the now junk muscle by muscle, artery by artery, vein by vein, making sure to leave enough time for him to fully feel the impact of each slice she made without giving him the opportunity to get used to it.

That light that danced in his eyes would slowly morph into terror and  _god, it's a good feeling to be on the receiving end of that look._ It's completely pathetic, how he would look at her with a silent plea that he knows she will disregard as of any sort of kind and merciful god would ever exist to make it all stop in a world where She doesn't. And as she theoretically stares down at the pallid, breathing corpse before her, she knows very well that that is what she is to him at that moment. Fear inevitably melts into reverence, and that's how he looks at her as she digs her nimble healer's fingers into the old wound she reopened, cajoling any blood vessel too small until she could slip herself in, let her finger writhe as it pushes against the walls. She only moves on to the next vessel when she is knuckle-deep and it rips against the width of her digits. She stands as a god with him nestled comfortably under her thumb, knowing full well how menial the task of crushing him would be.

She's at the medicine cupboard and Komaeda is seemingly running out of things to blabber about, opting to hum contently instead.

She's awful. Absolutely, irrevocably and irredeemably disgusting.

And he's supposed to be like her, she's always believed, but his repulsiveness fades with every day. She doesn't like the feeling of being left alone. At least when fiends dig their heels into her throat, she has company. But everyone she knows here is so much better than she, and now the one person she could rely on to mirror her turmoil has risen from the rock bottom she's been ground into all her life.

"Everything has been going so well lately," he eventually mutters, along with a sigh and a light chuckle that didn't quite match his somewhat familiar but unreadable expression, "I don't know what to think about it."

He doesn't restart his humming, and the silence fills the air with a poignant tension she can't really place.

"It scares me," he adds after a few moments, voice small but face unchanged with an effortless smile despite the trace of something volatile sleeping in his irises. He tangles his fingers and it betrays his vulnerability. He's completely trusting. The poor thing didn't know what he really should be scared of.

She doesn't respond as she applies alcohol to skin. He doesn't expect her to. She wonders how much their pseudo-therapy sessions have contributed to his improved demeanour, wonders how far she could blame herself for her loneliness, as she pushes the needle into an artery. He doesn't so much as flinch, far too used to the sensation to be afraid of it. He offers her a gentle smile as she plunges the medication into the fast-flowing well-spring of blood that only just bubbles over as she pulls the needle out. Between the bead that forms on his arm and the scarlet swirl that frolics through a field of excess liquid in the syringe, Tsumiki's head spins. She places a small, colourful bandaid over the dot, the same type she uses herself.

Komaeda stands from the bed as soon as she sits back in her chair, flashing her an easy, shining grin, "thank you again for taking time out of your certainly busy schedule just to-"

"Ahh it- it's no problem!" Her squeak of an interruption evidently surprises him, but he says nothing. She can't sit and listen to him self-depreciate. She can't. Not when she knows it isn't accurate. Not anymore. "I'll see you the same time next week!"

He beams at her genuinely, waving his prosthetic as he leaves, the metal glint replacing Her softness tormenting her. As if anything could ever truly replace Her.

Junko was terrible, and she knows this, but she can't help but  _wish_ when she watches one of the few people she could tentatively call a friend fall into the arms of someone he loves; that she could once again drown in the soft expanses if skin she felt whenever She had the whim of making her feel wanted; that she could choke once again on the sickly sweet stench of perfume that permeated her being; that she could be deafened once again by maliciously boisterous, confident peals of laughter that bounced from deep within her well endowed chest.

Everyone else seemed determined to heal. They tread carefully around touchy subjects, licking each other's wounds. They were healing their shattered minds, their rope bound tracheas their torn open throats; Tsumiki sat rotting with bandaids that were trying their best to disguise her permanent taint as an endearing character trait, desperately hoping that someone would come join her down with the lowest of the low. She often speculates whether or not anyone less repugnant than her ever considers what it would be like if they stopped holding each other up to bask in the warm light of people like Hinata and Naegi to scab over their traumas and instead were dragged down to her level.

Disgusting.

**Author's Note:**

> Mikan baby please talk to someone,


End file.
